#laatinx

Post #3

The scholarly article Latino Fathers: The relationship Among Machismo, Acculturation, Ethnic Identity, and Paternal involvement by Jon Glass and Jesse Owens explains their study in which the focus was on how Latino fathers perceive their involvement with their children. The article makes the point that research has shown that parental involvement can have a direct effect on a child’s well-being; this includes academic performance, self-esteem, and depressive symptoms. It is also an important ethnic focus because it Latinos are the fastest growing minority in the United States. The term Latino is used for people from North, Central, and South America; although it includes many cultures, they share similar values of “familiismo, respeto, and educacion” (AUTHOR, 252).  The authors also states that it is important to understand how gender norms can have an effect on parental involvement. Latino culture uses the term machismo for masculine norms, but for the most part, the word has a negative connotation to it; it includes negative aspects like sexism, aggressive behaviors, hypermasculinity, and interpersonal dogmatism. Just as the term has negative connotations, it has positive ones as well; the positive connotations are better known as caballerismo. This term “is defined by egalitarian beliefs, affiliation, positive family relationships, and empathy.

The study had four parts to their hypothesis. The first part included that Latino acculturation of Latino fathers would be positively associated with their parental involvement. It also included that ethnic identity and caballerismo attitudes would be positively associated with the father’s involvement. Lastly, machismo attitudes would have a negative association with the father’s involvement. In the study, 70 Latino fathers took a twenty item survey that were rated on a four point scale.

The results expressed no relationship between ethnic identity or caballerismo and parental involvement but it did show a negative association between machismo scores and parental involvement. Ultimately, the study concluded that machismo attitudes may be related to emotional, interpersonal, ands physical distance from children. Caballerismo is a relatively new dimension of machismo for researchers. This new relatively new term makes the study a little more difficult, but overall, the machismo term does not fully describe Latino men.

I thought this article was very interesting and it made me think outside of the negatives society has taught us to look at. As I think back to my own experience with my Hispanic culture, I forget that caballerismo is a dimension of machismo. Because of this,  think that I agree with everything stated in the article. Not all Latino fathers are the same, and although there are negatives to machismo, the complexities of it make it all the more difficult to really describe Latino men and the effects they have on their children. I think that a person who cares about justice on the basis of gender might bring up the question of this specifically can affect Latina young girls; would machismo affect them the same way it does to the boys?